


a million little gods

by trashyeggroll



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angsty Fix-It, F/F, Occurs prior to "Gone Rogue", Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 17:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20118847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashyeggroll/pseuds/trashyeggroll
Summary: Hurt and feeling abandoned by her father, Nora West-Allen uses the Negative Speed Force to right another egregious wrong in her life: Godspeed's murder of her best friend, Lia Nelson.





	a million little gods

**Author's Note:**

> This IS a fix it, but it's still not necessarily a happy ending. I made some backstory to flesh out the history between Nora and Lia, and then kind of do a timey-wimey :: waves hands vaguely :: fix it that could be canon. Gets a little Endgame-y.

Timeline rules. So many timeline rules, until there weren’t. Team Flash had been all worried about her effect on the timeline, until they hadn’t been, when it served their needs. It was almost like every “rules” barrier her father threw in front of her was no more than a smokescreen to slow her down, like his whole speech about the Humpty Dumpty mug. She’d kept the thing, like a kid with a pet rock, and now it seemed like such an empty gesture, with her father having banished her without hesitation. 

Teeth clenched, Nora vibes said mug to dust, ignoring the confused look Eobard Thawne gives her in return. “Coffee that bad?”

“My dad has all these rules, but when has  _ he _ ever followed them when it counts?” she hisses as she lets the ashes scatter into the musty prison air. “He saved  _ his _ mom, but not Cisco’s brother? He can run into danger half-cocked and it’s noble, but I do it, and I’m immature?” 

Eobard raises his eyebrows, shrugging. “So what’re you gonna do about it?”

“First, I’m gonna take care of what’s mine. And then, I’ll make sure my dad knows just how strong  _ I _ can be.” 

“I know that look,” rumbles Thawne with a tilt of his head. He smiles then, a sickly thing on his pale, gaunt cheeks, and prods, “A woman?”

The speedster doesn’t answer, but Eobard seems to not need it. 

“Love makes the heart weak, you know. People make bad decisions, under the influence.” 

Nora meets his eyes, frowning, and a solar flare-level rush of rage hits her veins, red and purple sparks jumping across her hands. She grits out, “I guess you’re right about that, too, then. Because I’d shatter the universe for her.” 

The prisoner’s looking at her with an expression she hasn’t quite seen before: proud, but also… She can’t place it. Not quite satisfaction, but something near it. His instructions on using the Negative Speed Force had seemed mystical at minimum, but he’d not led her astray so far. After all, turns out he’d been right about not telling Barry of Thawne’s involvement because of how The Flash would react… and so, here she was. Stranded. Abandoned. 

But not for long. With a quick goodbye, knowing Eobard has no interest in her personal vendettas, Nora launches into the Negative Speed Force. 

...and doesn’t  _ quite _ stick the landing. She travels through a wormhole of red and purple lightning, arcing and spiderwebbing across her vision, and pops out the other side into a busy city street, nearly tumbling over a hot dog vendor. People are gawking and pointing cell phones at her as Nora dusts herself off, looking around just long enough to get her bearings before zipping away again. Her mask is on, so she’s not all that worried about the audience—she has much more pressing things happening. She’s just not sure  _ when. _

After speeding to a secluded roof, Nora leans over the rail to consider the landscape. A nearby LED sign for a local credit union tells her she got the day right, but she’s early, having arrived at the beginning of what would be a formative 24 hours in her life. Her past life. 

Now with her bearings, the speedster decides not to tempt fate too openly and just quietly wait out the day, until her moment arrives. At this point, past-Nora should be running towards the crime scene, late as always and a frantic mess. The former seems like a faraway concept now… being  _ late _ for anything took considerable, intentional effort. 

But being Nora, she gets bored of hanging out on hot rooftops quickly, and her resolve to stay out of sight wanes. What harm could possibly come from stopping by to enjoy her favorite, long-missed future goodies? 

That’s how Nora ends up stopping by her favorite vapor cafe, apparently a  _ very _ different concept than in 2019; the vaporized nicotine and alcohol trend of that era had been followed by breakthroughs in nutrient and flavor sublimation resulting in vapor cuisine, where you could sample forty flavors of ice cream without feeling full. Which she did, followed by three scoops of actual ice cream.

The downtime—right about now, Lia and past-Nora should be theorizing about a speedster—gives Nora the time to get lost in thoughts she hadn’t acknowledged for a long time.

Primarily: Lia. 

Further out from that pain, that loss, and Nora can see the sequence of events so clearly. Barry Allen had been motivated by the loss of his mother, her namesake. It had driven him to be a CSI, had inspired his most dramatic and controversial decisions as The Flash. For Nora West-Allen… it was Lia. Lia’s death had delivered a seemingly irreparable blow to her relationship with Iris,  _ her _ Iris. The unbearable pain of it, the rock-bottom loneliness, had driven her straight to Thawne, and by that route, back to that fateful night when the satellite fell. Like time-space dominoes, with Lia being the first piece to fall and set off the chain reaction. 

Remembering the hurt,  _ feeling _ it as fresh and raw as if it were yesterday… some of her casual attitude towards her plan fades. She leaves the vapor cafe for a Jitters quadruple espresso shot latte, rolling her eyes at the $50 price tag, and then pulls her hood up to pace around the city (carefully avoiding the area around Bug and Byte’s failed bank heist). Her racing mind continues.

Just on face value, Lia as catalyst to all of  _ this _ made sense—she was Nora’s best friend, the only person in the world she truly, deeply trusted, and she’d been brutally ripped away by an evil man.

But if she wasn’t careful, she found herself admitting, Nora to Nora, that it had been  _ more _ than that. 

They met as freshman roommates at CCU, and their friendship had taken two semesters to build into something substantial. Full of anger and distrust over her father’s disappearance and her mother’s just… everything… Nora had been reluctant to accept Lia’s bright, goofy personality as either genuine or enjoyable. She sometimes didn’t understand why Lia had never given up on her, weathering Nora’s standoffishness with a smile and bad jokes, until one day, something just  _ clicked. _

If she had to boil it down to a moment, Nora always thought of one of the first days of spring that year, when the weather had warmed up enough to enjoy the outdoors for the first time in months. She’d been studying for an organic chemistry exam on the quad when Lia strolled across the grass to boldly (or perhaps obliviously) plop down on the blanket next to her roommate, humming quietly to herself while Nora more or less ignored her. 

Eventually, though, and while campus maintenance folks tended to nearby flower beds that would soon bloom, Lia ventured with her “joke voice”: “What kind of socks do gardeners wear?” 

Nora had said nothing, though her pen paused over her notebook. She resisted the urge to sigh. 

“Garden hose.”

And for whatever reason, the wrinkle of Lia’s eyes as she held back laughter at her own pun, the welcome, sorely missed sunshine warming Nora’s skin, or even just her exhaustion from her courseload—Nora had started chuckling. Quietly at first.  _ Garden hose. _ Then she snorted, and they both broke into near-uncontrollable laughing and snickering, until their faces were red and tears were running down their faces. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon chatting on the grass, chortling over gossip and personal stories until it was too dark to sit outside anymore, 

Seemingly from that afternoon forward, Lia and Nora were synonymous. Social events, classes, living arrangements—you didn’t get one without the other. 

And at some point, right before Godspeed changed her life forever, Nora had come to realize she wanted more. Her stomach roiled at the guy from their capstone class who made Lia blush whenever he complimented her writing or outfit. She nearly threw hands (for an unrelated offense including a spilled drink) with the woman who asked Lia to dance at one of their rare nights out on the town—even though finding a romantic lead was kind of the entire stated point of such evenings.

One night, when Lia had fallen asleep on their living room couch during a Doctor Who marathon… Nora came close to admitting to herself  _ why _ she felt that way about those things. Lia’s head had been resting on her shoulder, her warm weight and the familiar smell of her shampoo filling Nora’s chest with some quite unschway butterflies. Her unhelpful brain kept tossing out increasingly surprising scenarios, too—asking Lia to dinner, telling her how she felt. Maybe confessing those feelings to her friend over a night like this one, in comfy clothes and after a couple glasses of wine. Or the suggestion that made her skin tingle, to maybe wake up Lia, give a grand speech, and if that went well… pull her in for a kiss. Tug her to one of their bedrooms and put her palms all over those hips she’d come to appreciate more than a strictly platonic friend might, to fill her hands with  _ Lia _ and see where the night might take them after that. 

But past-Nora had been afraid. All she’d done that night was awkwardly shake herself free, waking up Lia in the process, and excused herself for the night as quickly as possible.

Then, Lia died. A candle blown out, leaving Nora in a sudden, all-encompassing darkness. 

It was like a timeline cut short, an entire universe of possibilities snuffed out in seconds. Nora had been robbed of a world where she could take a risk and know, really  _ know, _ whether Lia felt the same way. She had her suspicions—certain looks here, a flustered moment there… but that was  _ all _ she had.

Until today (so to speak). 

The speedster pauses a few feet down an alley to check her watch. Past-Nora had been afraid, untrained, but she’d done everything she possibly could to try to save her friend. If only Iris hadn’t hidden her powers from her, if only she’d had someone else to help. Now that she knew how many times the Flash family had saved lives in impossible odds… it hurt even more to have faced Godspeed alone. No Cisco, no Killer Frost, no Iris at the helm. So now, just like for the rest of her life, Nora would just fix all of that herself. 

XS dawns her mask again, facing away from the bustling street, and then takes off at full speed. Time to make it right. 

She comes to a stop inside the warehouse just as past-Nora and Lia discover the barrel of chemicals Godspeed wants, but keeps hidden among the shelves as the scene plays out, like a car crash she sees coming from down the road.

“Unless your super speed came with super biceps, we are not getting this out of here,” groans Lia, glaring at the container. 

Despite the seriousness of what’s about to happen, Nora’s mouth wants to twitch toward a smile. In hindsight, Lia had definitely commented on her body way more than a  _ strictly platonic _ friend might. Not that past-Nora had ever noticed, too busy being worried her own feelings might show. 

The speedster nearly startles at the  _ whoosh _ sound of Godspeed himself arriving and immediately growling, “That’s mine.”

“Uh, okay—try and get this open,” she hears past-Nora say worriedly. “It’ll evaporate in seconds.” There’s a burst of purple-yellow light, and then her voice is farther away: “If you want it, you’re gonna have to come through me to get it.”

“Ah. You’re a speedster like me,” replies Godspeed in his rumbling, flanged tone. “So you need it, too.”

From her spot amongst the shelves, Nora can see Lia bravely attempting to pop off the barrel lid with a crowbar, and her own heart is pounding from adrenaline. She’s got this. She can stop all of this. 

After what seems like an eternity, Godspeed says the magic word: “Sorry.” 

_ Go-time. _ Past-Nora launches into a speedster battle with the white-gold interloper, and to the blind eye they look like nothing more than streaks of lightning—but now-Nora can see every step, every punch exchanged as she herself gears up for The Moment. Godspeed slams the old her into a column, and she remembers pain so intense she could barely move, and then now-Nora enters the fray. 

The white speedster turns to Lia and begins to run towards her, intending to give that fatal blow, but Nora’s learned her craft from Eobard Thawne  _ and _ The Fastest Man Alive. With the Negative Speed Force behind her, stoked by her memory of the pain of Lia dying in her arms, Nora effortlessly intercepts Godspeed, slamming him into the wall and pinning him with her forearm against his neck.

“Who—what is this?” snarls the other speedster, helplessly struggling against her hold. They’re moving so fast that past-Nora and Lia are almost frozen by comparison, the former just beginning to make a confused facial expression, and the latter still valiantly attempting to open the barrel. 

“I’m XS,” she hisses as red overtakes her vision. Her free hand starts to vibrate faster than even she thought possible, blurred and buzzing as she holds it up to his stomach. “This is for my friend. Godspeed, August.”

Before she can overthink it, and with negative tachyons flooding her veins, Nora pushes the hand into his belly, ripping apart the cells and causing his lightning to instantly blink out to nothing… leaving just a purple and red glow against his gaudy white and gold outfit. She drops his body and quickly moves to the barrel, lifting the lip. 

Her first day after getting found out by Team Flash, her Uncle Wally had been talking about “soft” and “hard” events in timelines. Lia’s death was supposedly a fixed point, launching her into the sequence of events that resulted in this loop of her own past and future… and leading her back to this exact moment. Her educated guess from her research on timeline alteration suggested, worst case scenario, she wipes out her own future self. Best case? She rips open the universe and creates a new timeline entirely, one where Nora had proceeded in her self-discovery  _ with _ Lia by her side. The very universe of possibility that Godspeed had taken away. Whether or not the current version of herself would get to enjoy the fruits of all this labor… time would tell. So to speak. 

The speedster pulls Lia into the Negative Speed Force with her by grasping her friend’s wrist, and the shocked look on Lia’s face almost makes her forget the gravity of what she’s doing. 

“Nora?!” she gasps, completely unfooled by the mask. “Nora—what? And what—why is your hair—“

“I don’t have much time. Your body is sensitive to the negative tachyons.”

“Negative tachy—“

“He was going to kill you,” interrupts the speedster, her voice loud but surprisingly shaky. “Godspeed. He was about to kill you. I know this because… because I’m from the future.”

A slew of emotions crosses Lia’s face as she processes the words, but in true Lia fashion, she seems to believe it. She’s the person Nora trusts more than anyone in the world, and that goes both ways. Lia nods and asks quietly, “You came back to save me?”

Nora lifts her free hand to brush one side of Lia’s dark blonde bangs out of her eyes. “As soon as I figured out how. Losing you was like losing a piece of myself. I couldn’t let it go.”

Her friend’s cheeks redden, and she looks down, then around the warehouse. “Where are we right now?”

“We’re moving so fast that everything else seems frozen. Little trick I picked up along the way.” Nora glances back at her past self, still sprawled on the floor, then back up into achingly familiar hazel eyes. “I’m going to go back once I let go of you, okay? And I don’t know what’s going to happen after I do, but… if I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s that life can change faster than a blink of an eye.”

A smile is starting to creep into Lia’s expression, bashful though it may be. “What do you mean?”

Nora takes a deep breath. She just killed a man, and now she’s  _ nervous _ about this?  _ Do or die, West-Allen. _ “I mean that I love you, Lia. Me, and that version of me over there.  _ In _ love with you. I don’t know when it happened, but it did, and maybe this ruins our friendship, but I couldn’t go back without telling y—“

It takes the speedster more fractions of a second to realize what’s happening than seems reasonable, but once the full force of it hits, she nearly loses her grip on the Negative Speed Force.  _ Lia _ is kissing her. Lia is kissing  _ her. _ She comes back to her body to commit the feeling to memory—soft lips, Lia’s hand wrapping around the side of her jaw to keep her close, the way her friend sighs softly into her mouth. It’s everything she ever dreamed of, and her heart is thudding against her ribcage with a mix of relief, nostalgia, and lurking pain. She kisses back with gusto, tasting chocolate on Lia’s lips and putting her free hand against the taller woman’s chest, an innocent location just above her breasts, but the heat of Lia’s body under her shirt ignites an answering response in Nora’s.

When they part, Nora feels hot tears sting at her eyes, and she rests her forehead against Lia’s chin to hide the reaction. This version of herself will have this, and only this, to carry with her back to a timeline probably ravaged by her actions. Only the currently-frozen version of Nora will get the chance to see where all this goes.  _ Worth it. _

“Can I—can I tell you, what happened?” whispers Lia against her hair, sounding strained. “I won’t cause any like, major disasters?”

At that, Nora chuckles, but she chooses not to go into detail. “You can tell me. About the save  _ and _ the kiss, if you want.”

Lia leans back until their eyes meet. She’s smiling. “Just so  _ you _ know, future Nora West-Allen… I love you, too.”

It’s as comforting as it is heartbreaking, but Nora just kisses her one more time in lieu of a response, and it’s as desperate as it is soft. She hopes it gets across everything she wants to say, that she is a soft place to land, that if only they could cross the lines of insecurity to find each other… perhaps they could be happy. Or, they could face the world together, in every sense of the word.

None of these words make it past her lips, and when she hears Lia sniffle as she pulls away, Nora lets go of her wrist and bolts away, leaving past-Nora to carry the torch onward to whatever end. 

When she lands back in the prison in front of Eobard Thawne, her chest is all conflict. She’s elated to have had that moment with her best friend… but she’s staring down the barrel of an entire life without her. There’s nothing she can do about that now; this timeline seems to have kept marching. 

“Thawne?” she asks, noting that he at least  _ looks _ the same as when she left this timeline. 

“Little runner,” he greets in his usual syrupy voice. “You’ve been breaking the rules.”

Nora lifts her chin. She can still taste chocolate on her lips, can still hear Lia’s gasping breaths in her mind. “I don’t care. Looks like everything here is just as terrible as when I left it.”

Thawne grins. “Why’d you come back here?”

It’s a fair question. With what she knows now, she could’ve gone straight back to 2019 to start on her plan… so why  _ was _ she here? The answer blooms sickness in her stomach, and it spreads when Eobard hits the nail on the head. 

“I’m sorry, Little Runner—of course.” He puts on a sympathetic expression. “You have no one else to tell of your… adventure, with this woman. I presume you’re the one who killed Godspeed a few months ago?”

Of course he already knew. Nora sniffs and feels her heart harden, like the negative tachyons are filling it to the brim. She sees red again as she replies, “I wouldn’t mess with me, Thawne. Not today. I’m going back to 2019 now, for our plan.”

Eobard shrugs and nods. “All right. Have it your way. And good luck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Did ya'll know that the actress who plays Lia is Peter Gallagher's daughter?! 
> 
> yell at me on tumblr [@trashyeggroll](https://trashyeggroll.tumblr.com/)
> 
> title from "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire
> 
> _If the children don't grow up_  
_Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up_  
_We're just a million little gods causin' rain storms, turnin' every good thing to rust_  
_I guess we'll just have to adjust_  



End file.
